Wednesday June 17, 2009
Entrance: 3 000 LL |
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  About the event |
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8 pm
Omar Amiralay
Massa'ibu Qawmen (The Misfortunes of Some)
1982. Color. 52’. Arabic with French & English subtitles
Haj Ali, who learned the trade of burying the dead during the Lebanese Civil War, will not allow his drive to earn a living to lead him to wish death unto others, and it is for this reason that he works as a tax driver on the side. Through this personality that lives off of everyday political violence, the film exposes the relationships that connect politics to economics and trade to the market, which constitute the only human activity capable of picking up the pieces of a broken society.
Break: 15'
9.15 pm
Mohammad Soueid
Ghiyab (Absence)
1990. Color. 45'. Arabic with English Subtitles
Is it possible to talk about death in wartime? This question is exposed through four people who have lost their friends and relatives in four different regions in Lebanon.
The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker.
Born in Damascus in 1944, Omar Amiralay studied theatre at the Théâtre des Nations in Paris between1966 and 1967. He enrolled at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinematographiques (IDHEC) in Paris in 1967 but his studies were cut short in 1968 because of the student riots. Amiralay returned to Syria in 1970 and worked there until 1980, where he created three films as well as headed the Cinema Club in Damascus and the Union of Cinema Clubs in Syria. Since 1980, Amiralay has worked with a number of French television stations, creating around twenty short and feature-length documentary films.
Born in Beirut in 1959, Mohammad Soueid is a writer and filmmaker. He is the author of several books in Arabic about Lebanese and Arab cinema such as Suspended Cinema: Lebanese Civil War Films (Beirut: Institute of Arab Researches, 1986), History of Movie Theaters in Old Beirut (Beirut: An-Nahar, 1996) and Literature and Screen-writing in Arab Countries (published within the framework of a seminar on the subject which was part of the Arab Cinema Festival organized by the Arab World Institute, Paris, 1995). As a film-director, he was responsible for various productions including his first film Absence (1990) and his autobiographical trilogy of full-length documentaries Tango of Yearning (1998), Nightfall (2000) and Civil War (2002). For several years, he was a Film Professor at St. Joseph University - Beirut. Winner of the Best Director Prize at the Cairo Radio and Television Festival in 1996 for his film Roses of Passion and the Best Documentary Director Prize at the Beirut International Film Festival in Beirut in 2000 for Tango of Yearning, today, Mohammad Soueid continues to work in the field of film criticism while making his own films.
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